Joanna Ruocco: The Mothering Coven

“Thank you,” says Fiona. Dorcas has started thinking about witches, how they can turn into cats and regain themselves eight times, but the ninth time they stay cats forever.

“What about shamans?” thinks Dorcas. She crunches her cinnamon toast.

“Thank you!” says Dorcas.

[:]

Mrs. Borage’s teeth have never given her a moment’s trouble. Agnes’s teeth are square, but serviceable. Bryce’s teeth are tiny and resplendent. Dorcas feels oral shame: her peg laterals, her crooked bicuspids. Fiona’s caries do not enter into her psychic register. Behind Ozark’s shy smile: an inner ring of milk teeth, weaker and smaller, but tenacious, like shade plants.

No cinnamon toast for the foreign student, Hildegard. She’s still sleeping in the room beneath the stairs. Agnes is beginning to wonder if she mustn’t be enchanted.

“Adolescents do need large amounts of sleep,” says Agnes. Are they all enchanted? At least a little bit.

When Hildegard was awake, she listened to her small silver headphones at the dining room table and she emptied pixie stix into her yogurt.

“Pink tastes best,” said Hildegard.

“It’s some kind of synaesthesia,” said Dorcas. Mrs. Borage closed her eyes.

“Pink,” murmured Mrs. Borage. “Yes, it tastes like salmon.” Agnes watched Hildegard eat the pink yogurt. Hildegard sang to herself, eating.

“Can’t you hear my love buzz? Can’t you hear my love buzz?

Can’t you hear my love buzz?”

She wouldn’t like it if Agnes answered. Agnes learned not to answer the questions someone is singing from Bertrand.

“Can I try the salmon yogurt?” asked Mrs. Borage. She took a spoonful.

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Borage. “It is delicious.”

[:]

Dorcas cracks her slice of cinnamon toast; Fiona cracks her slice of cinnamon toast; Agnes, crack; Ozark, crack.

Crack! Cinnamon toast between the interminable teeth of Mrs. Borage.

Bryce hangs her cinnamon toast from the hat stand. It is terrifically burnt. She will call the hat stand “After the Tungus-ka Fireball” in honor of all the catastrophists born beneath the burning sky in Siberia.

[:]

“Mmmm,” sighs Mrs. Borage. She pops open a bottle of cranberry mead, and she holds the bottle in the crook of her arm. The mead is cold in her mouth and hot in her chest, as though the mead starts at Axel Heiberg, and flows south, Crane Creek, Horse Creek, Turkey Creek, converging at last in the Indian River.

“It would make sense if humans had several esophagi,” thinks Mrs. Borage. “On the principle of tributaries.”

Why don’t they?

“That might be where evolution went wrong,” thinks Mrs. Borage. “Unless it was elsewhere.”

[:]

Agnes slips away and stands at the back door. The night sky cracks through the clouds and she watches the crack widen. The stars are very beautiful. The galaxy looks like the stringy tissue in egg whites.

“Chalazae,” sighs Agnes. A lovely word. Snow drifts across the yard, and the upper stories of the oak trees have whitened. Agnes sees a shadow slip between the trees. Her throat tightens, but it’s just lonely Mr. Lomberg, the retired fire marshall, on his old wooden skis, following the smoke back to the chimneys.

Will Bertrand come back with the first snow? What if Agnes calls her with a magic name from the old books of lost girls?

“Snegurochka,” whispers Agnes, just to see if something will happen.

The snow has melted away. Did it even happen? We wouldn’t believe it, but there is Ms. Kidney’s sled, parked in the garage between the televisions. The sled takes up quite a bit of space. Bryce will have to move her studio into the dining room. She and Fiona carry televisions up the front steps. Dorcas carries the refrigerators. Lately, Bryce has been acquiring found objects at a dizzying rate.

“The trick is looking in magazines,” says Bryce.

[:]

Bryce opens a magazine and studies it intently. She loves home electronics but not to the neglect of intimate apparel and cook-ware.

“A newly patented baking pan!” cries Bryce. Due to the addition of interior walls, each brownie baked will have at least two crisp edges!

“Let crispness proliferate,” thinks Bryce, rapturously. She draws a quick mock-up on the dining room wall. It looks like the garden labyrinth at Chartres. Will that do the trick? Bryce draws a Greco-Roman square.

“A hundred crisp edges per brownie,” breathes Bryce. “A hundred birthday brownies for Mrs. Borage.”

Bryce can hear her cinnamon toast popping up in the kitchen. She runs to push it down again. Cinnamon clouds roll through the house.

Agnes is practicing weather charms. Shouldn’t the party end with a midnight rainbow? She sniffs. Cinnamon clouds will make everyone hungry.

“Herring, punch, toast, popsicles, nut mixes,” says Agnes. She’s nervous that won’t be enough.

“Better make it a potluck,” thinks Agnes. Potlucks make everyone happy. Even the guests who have herring allergies. Invariably, there are guests with herring allergies.

“They can bring the marshmallows and pasta salad,” thinks Agnes.

[:]

Agnes wonders if we can call the party a centennial. After all, a century is defined as one hundred consecutive years.

What if Mrs. Borage starts talking about Ethan Allen? His fawn vest and sagathy breeches? The time they rode together on catamounts all the way from Isle La Motte?

“We’ll all be embarrassed,” thinks Agnes. Agnes more than anyone else, of course. Agnes has a professional degree.

[:]

Today Bryce is working on block-prints, the gilded roses and wreaths and the Roman numerals MDCCXXXV. They are exactly like the pink Ruckers papers you can buy in all the finest auction houses. Now she can put out her shingle

HARPSICHORDS RESTORED HERE.

[:]

Bryce also made our kitchen wallpaper, a Privy-council green flock and, on the second floor, red glitter gorgons and a border of narrow leaves, cannabis sativa.

“Bertrand insisted they were Japanese maple,” says Bryce, defensively. She has grown to like the cannabis sativa leaves, from the purely artistic perspective.

Bryce imagines Bertrand in Japan, or on Taketomi Island, where the sand is made of a trillion tiny star-shaped skeletons and bushes of cannabis sativa bloom on the coral. Water buffaloes graze on cannabis sativa and children brush the water buffaloes all over with glue and the water buffaloes wander gently through the town, pollinating everything they touch with cannabis sativa.

We haven’t received a postcard from Taketomi Island, or a little box of star bones, or blue corals, or star-shaped seeds of cannabis sativa.

“Not that I expect anything,” says Bryce. She wonders what kind of glue the children brush on the water buffaloes. She wonders if the glue is made of water buffaloes. It must be.

“Either that or it is made of cannabis sativa,” thinks Bryce.

[:]

Fiona has a mouthful of pins. She has decided to make Mrs. Borage leather chaps. She can’t ask Mrs. Borage for her measurements; the chaps are a surprise. Fiona took her own measurements instead. The chaps fit her perfectly. Fiona looks at her reflection in the mirror. What was Fiona thinking? Mrs. Borage doesn’t want leather chaps. Fiona will have to make her something else.

“A fringed leather jacket!” says Fiona.

[:]

Today Mrs. Borage is wearing a navy blue jacket, gold lace jabot and cuffs, white knickers and black leather boots with high heels. She walks the long walk to the center of town. She sits on the bench in front of the library. She takes a popsicle out of her boot. Popsicles are more refreshing in the summertime, but in the summertime, you can’t pack them for lunch. They melt. Mrs. Borage wolfs the whole thing down immediately. Was it strawberry cheesecake? Probably. It might have been Black Forest Chocolate.